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MANSFIELD – Jones Potato Chips have been part of everyday life in Mansfield for more than 80 years
It’s a quick gas-station snack. Your contribution to a company potluck, or added to a care package for someone missing home.
But lately, people have been talking about Jones for a different reason.
Across local Facebook pages, the same debate keeps popping up. Someone opens a bag for the first time in years and says, “These taste like they used to.”
Has the recipe changed, or is it the same as always?
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The factory store sometimes carries flavors you won’t find on the market
Inside the Jones Potato Chip factory
Curious whether anything had actually changed, I went to the Bowman Street factory to find out.
Walking onto the production floor, the air smells like freshly cut potatoes, earthy and damp. Then the scent shifts to smoky, sweet, and a little spicy from a barbecue batch being made that day.
Tony Jones, president of Jones Potato Chips, led me across the production floor as potatoes moved from washers and peelers onto conveyors that wound through the building.
It’s a hypnotic sight.
But I was there for the question Mansfield had been asking online.
Have the chips actually changed?
Tony smiled.
“Over time, change was involuntary, so it did taste different,” he said, referring to when the company had to stop using partially hydrogenated soybean oil after the Food and Drug Administration ruled it unsafe.
Since then, the company has spent years fine-tuning every detail of the chip-making process.
Thickness.
Salt application.
Temperature.
Consistency.
“We’re really proud of the chip we’re making now,” Tony said.
So yes, there was change, but no dramatic return to a long-lost version.
“That wasn’t even necessarily the goal,” he said. “It was to make the best potato chip that we could,” he said.
Flavor has a powerful connection to memory, and few foods are tied to Mansfield quite like Jones Potato Chips.
From potato to a Jones chip
Behind that familiar taste is an efficient process that moves quickly and deliberately.
Potatoes arrive by the truckload — three to five semis a week, each carrying more than 45,000 pounds. They’re washed, peeled, sliced, and dropped into the fryer before beginning their journey down a maze of conveyors.
After cooking, chips pass under scanners that photograph each one. Imperfect chips are ejected by a puff of air while the rest move on to be seasoned and bagged, with employees keeping a watchful eye.
Technology has changed the process dramatically.
Tony explained that his grandfather, Frederick W. Jones, started the company in 1945 using a kettle system that produced about 10 pounds of chips per hour. Today, the continuous fryer can produce roughly 2,000 pounds an hour.
The scale is different, but the attention to detail is not.
From the factory to good times shared
The company has remained family-run for more than 80 years, with more than 40 relatives working there at different points.
During the tour, Tony introduced me to his father, Bob Jones, who now serves as a company advisor. Bob shared more Mansfield chip history, like how years ago families could come straight to the factory and buy fresh chips in large reusable tins.
“It was like a weekly ritual on a Friday or a Saturday to go get a Jones can,” Bob said.
The cost for 24 ounces was $2.94.
These tins weren’t just snacks — they were a weekly promise, and have become relics of a simpler time, one treasured by those who remember it.
Jones is still making those moments happen today. Tony said he enjoys that their product shows up at so many positive occasions.
“What we produce is at graduation parties, ball games, and picnics,” he said. “Even if it is not a group event, someone might just be taking a break for lunch or watching TV. The way we get to join in people’s lives is at good, positive times.”
That connection helps explain why people here feel so strongly about these chips. For many Mansfield families, Jones is more than a snack — it’s the simple kind of joy that feels like home.
End of the line
The tour ended the way any good chip story should, with a bowl fresh off the line. Still warm, they were crisp, lightly salted, and impossible to stop after just one.
Curious, I asked, when does a potato officially become a Jones potato chip? He paused.
“Probably two answers for that,” Tony says, “because I do feel that you are eating a Jones potato chip. However, most people can’t walk off the street and have the experience that you’re having right now.
“So, I would say, when they are inside a box, because that means it’s gone through the entire process. Our safety, our care of the product, it has to go the whole way through, for the quality to be what we want it to be.
“When you open this up, it’s exactly the way that we intend it to be. Any earlier than that, it’s cutting out part of the process.”
So did Jones Potato Chips change?
Yes, just not in the dramatic way people online imagine.
When the industry moved away from partially hydrogenated oils, Jones had to adjust. Since then, the company has made small tweaks to perfect flavor and texture.
Whether that tastes like the chips people remember may depend as much on memory as recipe.
But when a bag of chips can spark hundreds of Facebook comments across Mansfield, one thing is clear: people here still care deeply about their hometown snack.
If you haven’t had them in a while, you might be surprised how familiar they taste.
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